Souvenirs Redux

by Sheila Connolly

By strange coincidence, I was gifted with a highly unlikely souvenir this week, and I'm still trying to fit it into my worldview of collecting mementos.

The backstory:  a Philadelphia friend and former colleague was the model for one of the characters in my Museum Mystery series.  She was going to be a background character, except she's kind of shoved herself into the foreground and plays an increasingly important role in the ongoing stories.  Disclaimer:  I didn't originally tell the real person about it (the character was always one of the good guys, not an evil killer), but now she knows and she's tickled pink by the whole idea, especially since I told her I'd add a love interest for her in a coming book (in both the books and in real life she's divorced).

I initially included her because she has a long and intimate association with Philadelphia history, through a string of ancestors whose name she still bears.  That led to her involvement at the historical society where I worked, when she was on the board (as were her father and grandfather before her). She (the character) was the perfect go-to individual for anything to do with who's who in Philadelphia, going back a couple of centuries.  Since my protagonist is not a native Philadelphia, she needs just such a resource person on hand.

Anyway, to jump to the present…  The National Museum of Korea, in Seoul, recently mounted an exhibit they called Art Across America, and a lovely 18^th-century portrait of one of those (real) ancestors and his family became the emblem for the exhibit.  Now, my husband has spent time in Seoul, over several years, and he has visited that museum on various occasions.  He will attest that Koreans are fascinated by all things American.

My friend, intrigued by all the hoopla that her ancestral family had occasioned in far-off Korea, decided to go see the exhibition in place.  She brought back souvenirs.  She shared a couple of those souvenirs with me.  The prize of the collection was…a towel with the iconic portrait on it.

No, not a tidy tea-towel such as you might find in an English palace (I think I have some of those squirreled away somewhere—the English do like their tea, and their bone china must be dried properly, of course).  This, in contrast, is a fuzzy if thin plush towel, made in Korea.

What do you do with a commemorative towel?  What were the Koreans thinking?

You can't dry the dishes with it, can you?  Isn't it kind of insulting to swab off your pots and pans with an historical figure?  If you do, is it some kind of obscure implied insult to our culture? Or major ambivalence?

If you are Korean, do you hang it on a wall, where it will sag, fade, and collect dust?  Do you frame this towel? Or do you store it carefully with all your other commemorative towels, and then on important family gatherings, take out the towels and pass them around for group admiration?

I'm baffled.  As I said before, I treasure many, often obscure souvenirs, that evoke strong memories in me.  But I have never envisioned cherishing a towel. 

Released June 2013

Souvenirs

by Sheila Connolly

From the French verb for "to remember," souvenirs are mementos that we bring back from our travels (near or far) to jog our memories about a place and a time.

I am a souveniraholic (there, a new word).  I bring home items from everywhere I go.  Some I acquire from cheesy stores on main streets or in airports, ignoring the "Made in Malaysia" stickers on the bottom.  I keep ticket stubs, not just for tax purposes.  I buy postcards, but only if I can't take a better picture (museums often frown on taking your own in their galleries, although with the ubiquitous cellphones these days it's hard to stop anyone). I even gather keychains, with the net result that my so-called key ring has only two keys on it (house and car), but at last count, five souvenir items.  Oh, and a small LED flashlight someone sent me unsolicited in the mail—very useful.

Seashells from Sydney

Other items I acquire in a more authentic if slightly peculiar way.  I gather things like sugar wrappers (in several languages).  I collect seashells compulsively. I bring back rocks, which may be correlated with the ever-increasing weight of my suitcase.  Most of the time I can remember where the rock came from—a white one from Les Baux in Provence (which I visited mainly in homage to writer Mary Stewart), a small piece of carved stone from the ruins of Tintern Abbey in Wales, immortalized by William Wordsworth (if you're ever in the neighborhood you must see it, because it's

My bit of Tintern Abbey

extraordinarily moving), bits of slate from the crumbling roofs of the houses where my Irish grandparents were born.  Quartz pebbles I pulled out of the red soil in Australia. A small medieval arabesque that had fallen off the medieval church in Malmesbury in England.  The list goes on.  (No, I did not make off with a piece of Stonehenge. Nor do I travel with a hammer and chisel.) Looking around my work area, I realize there are quite a few rocks—and some of them I can't even remember collecting.  I also collect shards of eighteenth century tombstones, particularly those with something inscribed by a long-dead hand.

All of these are squirreled away in various boxes and drawers and on shelves throughout my house.  I visit them periodically—and, yes, they do evoke memories.  I'd like to use the term "touchstone" but that has other, unrelated meanings.  Or I'd opt for talisman, but that too has other baggage, mainly pertaining to some mystical properties of protecting the bearer. 

This most recent trip was notably free of pebbles (largely because my suitcase started out too heavy), although there were plenty of opportunities to harvest them.  Well, there might be a little piece of Carrara tucked into a pocket.  But mostly I acquired things quite legitimately.  I also found I was looking at them differently:  I dubbed my haul "loot."

I know, loot implies I seized it without paying, because I had the power and the opportunity, and that's not quite right.  But I felt as though I was sacking the country, bringing home those things that captured my fancy or meant something to me.  That has little to do with monetary value, and much more to do with items that bring back with particularly clarity a memory, a sense of time and place.  Now and in the future, I will hold something, and I will smile at what it evokes.  I will remember exactly when and where I acquired it, and it will take me back there.

On an oddly related note, last month I published an e book (Relatively Dead) that includes a paranormal element that involves touch.  Pictures are wonderful and I take more than my fair share of them, but having something you can hold in your hand, that has a physical reality, no matter how small, is a different experience. With all the amazing advances in film and computer-generated images made in the recent past, it's harder and harder to believe your eyes and trust a picture.  If you hold something in your hand, it's real.